"Yes, it did [frustrate me]," Mata said. "In that specific moment, for that specific change, you’ve got to know Mourinho to understand his reasons.

“I’d come on after an hour, we were winning. There were six substitutions allowed and he had one left. He wanted to waste time and break the game up

He’s a pragmatist – he says so himself. So, his thinking is: ‘If they get the ball, they’re going to go long into the box. I’m going to take off the smallest guy’. That’s his reasoning. I understood it, because he’d told me what he was going to do before the change.

“Later on, because of what happened at Chelsea, the media digs up the past. I was happy because we’d won.

“His reasons for making the change were what they were, and I wasn’t going to question them. There was, and isn’t, any problem with him.”